ON THE PAST, MEMORY, RECOLLECTIONS AND HISTORY OF THE BULGARIANS IN “SIMVASILEVUSA”
ON THE PAST, MEMORY, RECOLLECTIONS AND HISTORY OF THE BULGARIANS IN “SIMVASILEVUSA”

Summary/Abstract: In the past one feels at home. One comes from that home, where the ones before him are, to go back one day and become one of them, a home for those that are to come. Think of it, that home is in one and one is that home. That’s why the past is cozy. Our awareness of the past is rooted in memory. Memory permeates all aspects of our life. Even our present is largely dedicated to memory, insofar as we spend a great part of it in fortifying our ties with the past. Our memory of the past is an indispensable condition for our sense of identity. We need the collective memory, i.e. the recollections of others, in order to affirm our own recollections, and in this way give them value. The opposite is also fully true, for life is fundamentally dialogical and the discovery of self is unthinkable without the others. If memory and history are processes penetrating the past, the vestiges of the past would put one on the track of processes that have produced that past. Often such traces are sparse, which makes them all the more valuable. Sometimes a few old photographs are the only remnants that have remained in place of one’s roots. In other cases only recollections replace places left long ago. Well, such places don’t have to be outstanding in order to be unforgettable. For many Bulgarians Salonica is just that kind of place. But Salonica is not some ordinary, unremarkable and insignificant city.

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